A tip of the hat to the Cat Diesel cap flickering across movie screens as a signifier of class, culture and character.
Within the sartorial semiotics of New Hollywood filmmaking – a cinematic era roughly stretching from Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart (1982) – few fashion accessories convey the reactionary retrograde sensibilities and working-class bona fides of (Southern) American masculinity quite like the iconic Cat Diesel hat. As promotional items for U.S. heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. aka CAT, these simple yellow/black ballcaps typically come with woven “Cat Diesel Power” patches embroidered above the bill, leveraging a vivid school bus colour scheme still favoured by the Pittsburgh Steelers, Waffle House, Dollar General, and other touchstones of wage-earner identity. Whether distributed by company sales agents or disseminated in other ways, Cat Diesel hats gained followings within vocations based around internal combustion engines including auto repair, construction, carnival work, and long-haul trucking sometime in the mid-to-late 1960s, dove-tailing nicely with the CB radio craze that flourished in the years following the 1973 oil crisis and imposition of a 55-mph national speed limit.
Long before product placement and embedded marketing became synonymous with Hollywood moviemaking, Caterpillar Inc. enjoyed elevated visibility thanks to its corporate logo’s recurrent big screen appearances. With few exceptions, audiences immediately knew that characters hailed from blue-collar (Bible-Belt) backgrounds when directors or costume designers affixed this frequently ventilated headgear atop the skulls of lead or support cast members, ostensibly injecting authenticity into celluloid depictions of that most shop-worn of stock movie characters. That is, those unsophisticated nonurbanites colloquially if also condescendingly known as “good ol’ boys,” “crackers,” “kickers,” “hillbillies,” “grits,” or “rednecks.” Whether played for cheap laughs à la the wily swamp folk of Soggy Botton U.S.A. (1981) or outright menace like the backwoods mountain people of John Boorman’s nightmarish Deliverance (1972), these onscreen portrayals of rural or small-town inhabitants invariably lack subtlety, telegraphing reductive class-based stereotypes largely through resonant wardrobe cues.
Cat Diesel hats abound amid such calculated foregrounding, serving as the unofficial snapbacks of honkytonks, truck stops, greasy spoons, and other outsider-averse roadside venues dotting the highways and byways of gun-fetishizing U.S. flyover country – or so well-known filmmakers like Dennis Hopper, Hal Needham, and Sam Peckinpah would have us believe. From the 1960s onward, these adjustable and/or mesh headpieces become flashing warning signs of looming danger or imminent violence for any hippie or misguided city folk unwise/unlucky enough to encounter intolerant locals hellbent on humiliating strangers, newcomers, or anyone else deemed fair game for meanspirited needling or alcohol-induced antagonizing. As tensions escalate and tempers flare, steering clear of any Cat Diesel hat-wearing roughneck appears quite prudent for reasons of both self-respect and self-preservation lest some savage beating or indiscriminate gunfire promptly ensues.
A case in point is the small-town Louisiana café scene from Dennis Hopper’s classic counterculture road movie Easy Rider (1969). Among a throng of highly menacing local toughs incensed by the attention that some doe-eyed teenyboppers pay the flashy motorcycles and unkept appearance of Wyatt aka “Captain America” (Peter Fonda), Billy (Hopper), and lush ACLU lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) is a cigar-smoking Cat Diesel cap-wearing goon listed in the end credits appropriately enough as Cat Man (Hayward Robillard).
Dispensing insightful “country witticisms” to his lawman tablemate such as “I think we should put them in a cage and charge admission to see them,” “I don’t think they’ll make the parish line,” and “that’s some Yankee queers, check out the flag on that bike,” Cat Man’s verbal intimidation gives way to outright murder one or two scenes later when he and his vigilante pals viciously attack our peripatetic trio bivouacked roadside. Beating a sleeping Hanson to death with bats and axehandles, this homicide foreshadows Wyatt and Billy’s untimely demise along a lonely stretch of highway, an iconic climatic film sequence symbolically heralding the 1960’s turbulent end or alternatively what author Philip Roth later dubbed “the indigenous American berserk.”
A less belligerent and more likable movie character cousin to Easy Rider’s Cat Man is Cledus “Snowman” Snow (Jerry Reed), the irrepressible 18-wheeler driving sidekick of Bo “The Bandit” Durville (Burt Reynolds) from Hal Needham’s dixie-fried car-chase romp Smokey and the Bandit, 1977’s highest domestic box-office earner behind Star Wars. Occasionally swapping his signature Cat Diesel cap for a crushed straw cowboy hat, Snowman emits peak 1970s independent American trucker vibes, happily clad in jeans, boots, plaid western shirt, sunglasses, and down vest, transporting an illegal cargo of Coors Beer eastbound and down across the Mississippi, jawing on the CB and eluding hapless smokies along the way.
Snowman’s penchant for pontificating to his basset hound Fred as the miles tick by and Bandit runs interference in a souped-up black T-top Trans Am generates no shortage of laughs, presaging the action television comedy series B.J. and the Bear (1979-1981) by a few years – a show premised on the highly realistic adventures of an affable freelance trucker who shares his cab with an overalls-wearing pet chimpanzee named after the University of Alabama’s legendary football coach Paul “The Bear” Bryant.
Striving to capture some of Smokey and the Bandit’s movie magic is Sam Peckinpah’s penultimate and highest grossing film Convoy (1978). Starring Kris Kristofferson as the frequently shirtless Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald and based on C.W. McCall’s surprise 1975 novelty hit song of the same name, Convoy features scene after scene of lead and support cast members sporting Cat Diesel hats as they push back against evil Arizona Sheriff Lyle “Cottonmouth” Wallace (Ernest Borgnine) over who ultimately rules the road. This familiar yellow/black headgear earns considerable screentime whether in quasi-slapstick barroom brawls or on-the-road big rig expository close-ups, conveying in no uncertain terms the blue-collar pedigree and down-home authenticity of these rugged individuals bristling against law enforcement impunity, living out the American Dream in true anti-authority fashion.
Other Cat Diesel hat appearances in New Hollywood-era movies include:
❉ Breaker! Breaker! (1977) – this largely forgotten Chuck Norris trucksploitation flick finds the future Walker Texas Ranger star arm-wrestling a bald-pated moustachioed galoot as his less imposing companion cheers them on nearby while wearing a Cat-Diesel cap.
❉ The Blues Brothers (1980) – a Cat Diesel hat sits atop the teary-eyed rube sorrowfully gulping down beer as Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood (Dan Ackroyd) sing Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” to a bunch of country music rowdies at Bob’s Country Bunker in this John Landis comedy classic.
❉ The Cannonball Run (1981) – fresh off his debut movie cameo in Hal Needham’s Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Hall of Fame New York Jets defensive tackle Joe Klecko makes a cameo appearance in the director’s next film as a Cat Diesel cap-wearing muscleman identified in the closing credits as “Polish Racing Driver.”
❉ Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) – both Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) and “Brad’s Bud” (Nicolas Cage) don ventilated Cat Diesel ballcaps on the first day of school in what is surely the earliest documented celluloid depiction of hipster suburban youth ironically adopting down-market products like trucker hats as fashion accoutrements.
❉ High Ballin’ (1978) – starring Peter Fonda and Jerry Reed in yet another road adventure, this movie has the former sporting a knitted Cat Diesel yellow/black ski cap throughout a nail-biting action sequence involving no shortage of car crashes, highway explosions, and scripted one-liners.
❉ Jinxed! (1982) – the shady Las Vegas gambler Harold Benson (Rip Torn) from Don Siegel’s underrated final movie sports a Cat Diesel hat, setting himself up as the heavy against his browbeaten girlfriend Bonita Frimi (Bette Midler) and her much younger love interest Willie Brodax (Ken Wahl).
❉ Thunder and Lightning (1977) – several cast members wear them in this Roger Corman-produced Florida Everglades moonshining caper starring David Carradine and Kate Jackson including character actor extraordinaire Charles Napier and cult crime writer Charles Willeford (Miami Blues, The Burnt Orange Heresy) in a bit player bartender role.
❉ White Line Fever (1975) – the righteously aggrieved and shotgun-wielding trucker Carol Jo “CJ” Hummer (Jan Michael Vincent) exacts justice while rocking a “Diesel Power” cap, one that evokes but does not precisely replicate the Cat Diesel corporate brand.
A growing retrospective appreciation of trashy movies and down-market exploitation films came to the fore just as New Hollywood’s low-key love affair with Cat Diesel hats began tapering off. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, local television affiliates nationwide featured weekend programming hosted by spooky, larger-than-life, figures including Svengoolie (Jerry G. Bishop/Rich Koz) and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (Cassandra Peterson), all trafficking in late-night showings of disreputable low-budget (horror) fare interspersed with cheesy jokes and cheap sight gags.
Accordingly, ties between this topmost expression of Caterpillar Inc. workwear and ornery retrograde rurality assume dimension in non-Oscar contenders like those covered in Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In (1987), a schlock movie review collection spanning the years 1982 to 1985 by syndicated Texas film critic John “Joe Bob Briggs” Bloom. Hyping a Stephen King introduction on its front cover, a clean-cut photo of Bloom alongside a color pencil illustration of his redneck alter ego holding a beer and wearing a yellow/black Cat Diesel knockoff helps establish the book’s surly satirical tone. If anything, this cornpone imagery advances the innate interplay between Cat Power snapbacks and lowbrow aesthetics, legitimizing the inherent entertainment value of this notorious headgear’s working-class (Southern) affiliations.
Cat Diesel hats effectively went into hibernation sometime around Joe Bob’s publication as U.S. audiences grew tired of the derivative trucker tales, revenge narratives, and knee-slapping B-movie hokum that begot so many of their onscreen appearances. Amid shifting cineplex sensibilities and America’s declining CB radio obsession, their informal standing as referential touchpoints for masculine blue-collar (Southern) identity all but disappeared from popular films. Patrick Swayze’s breezy bare knuckle brawl fest Road House (1989) remains the only major studio offering where this black/yellow promotional swag found expression during these wilderness years. Here, as alpha males James Dalton (Swayze) and Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) escalate their mutual hatred of each other against the sleazy dive bar backdrop of notorious Missouri nightspot the Double Deuce, the latter’s portly comic-relief henchman Tinker (John William Young) – “a polar bear fell on me” – rarely fails to flex his lunch-bucket street cred, accessorizing multiple outfits with both red suspenders and a Cat Diesel cap.
Fast forward a decade or so from Road House and eagle-eyed viewers began noticing Cat Diesel hats once again flickering across movie screens. While not approaching their 1970s New Hollywood heyday, these early 2000s appearances include major marquee favourites like A Perfect Storm (2000) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). The former has ship captain Linda Greenlaw (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) donning one throughout this unrelenting big-budget seafaring death trip. The latter features a flashback sequence with Margot Tenenbaum (Gweneth Paltrow) losing a finger to her axe-wielding and Cat Diesel cap-wearing Farmer Father (Andrew Wilson) after a visit to her rural Indiana birth family goes spectacularly awry.
More disturbing is the headwear’s bit part in the memorable Kill Bill: Volume I (2003) scene where Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) springs to life to kill an aptly named Trucker (Jonathan Loughran) who paid a hospital orderly to have his way with her comatose body. Reinforcing notions that those favoring these enduring fashion accessories are inherently dangerous, Trucker’s horrific death does not even rate Kill Bill’s ultimate comeuppance. In point of fact, if Quentin Tarantino is now widely recognized as the leading authority on high/low cinema, then his outfitting of a big rig driving bad guy with a Cat Diesel hat speaks volumes about the brand’s accorded status as a signifier of reactionary (Southern) male identity.
More recently, this logoed headgear has cropped up in high-earning Hollywood fare aimed at younger audiences. To wit, the 2022 horror-comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies features actor Lee Pace wearing a camouflage variation of the Cat Power cap in select scenes just as 2024’s The Fall Guy has stuntman Colt Seevers (Ryan Gosling) acting as a de facto brand ambassador for Caterpillar Inc. , sporting a Cat Diesel hat throughout this early summer blockbuster. In both instances, these cameos appear less about evoking authentic blue-collar characters with physically demanding livelihoods and more about depicting millennial and Gen Z fashion choices based around down-market workwear brands like Carhartt and Dickies.
As the preceding examples suggest, Cat Diesel hats prove highly effective in communicating notions of class, culture, and character. Viewers get a pretty good idea of how individuals will behave – never mind their regional and political affiliations – when these simple black/yellow ballcaps appear onscreen. In the New Hollywood-era and beyond, Cat Diesel hats serve as the go-to headgear for filmmakers looking to convey a particular strain of blue-collar (Southern) masculinity, one firmly steeped in expressions of reflexive intolerance and chip-on-the-shoulder parochialism. Even if MAGA snapbacks now supersede them in real life as outward indicators of unrestrained American populism, Cat Diesel caps demonstrate surprising longevity within moviemaking contexts.
As cinematic tropes, they transcend any specific genre, appearing in comedies, dramas, and action movies, standing the test of time in ways that Easy Rider audiences could never have anticipated some 55 years ago. If movies are primarily a visual medium that uses fashion to help transmit plot, characterization, and other narrative details, then filmgoers are hard-pressed to find a more vivid example of this process. Suffice it to say, Cat Diesel caps hold special clout that goes far beyond whatever promotional purpose Caterpillar, Inc. initially envisioned in the 1960s, playing a crucial role in accessorizing stock movie characters – sometimes charitably, sometimes not – that represent large swaths of America’s cultural heartland.
❉ Header image credit: Jerry Reed in ‘Smokey and the Bandit’.
❉ Ty Matejowsky is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He has published various pieces with We Are The Mutants, The Middling Spaces, and Sports Literate. His book Smothered and Covered: Waffle House and the Southern Imaginary (University of Alabama Press) came out in 2022. https://www.linkedin.com/in/ty-matejowsky-86026a92/
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